In France, the AGEC law has played a welcome accelerating role in the development of reuse. It set a clear ambition — reaching 10% reusable packaging by 2027 (across all product categories) — and provided dedicated resources to producer responsibility organizations, requiring them to allocate 5% of their revenue to reuse development. We now have a clear destination and the fuel to move forward.
At Citeo, for household packaging of fast-moving consumer goods, we chose to start by “watering the desert.” Since 2023, more than €115 million has been committed to supporting 550 projects to help launch or sustain reuse initiatives across all sectors, observe what works and what does not, and draw lessons from these experiences. This exploration phase was necessary to prepare for the next step: financing projects with the strongest scaling potential.
One such high-potential initiative is the ReUse pilot across four regions, aimed at structuring a national, shared, and interoperable system capable of aggregating and aligning the efforts of all stakeholders — manufacturers, retailers, reuse operators, and local authorities — and providing a robust, competitive, and sustainable framework to scale reuse.
Why emphasize shared infrastructure? Because reuse is not just a generous idea; it is an industrial chain that must be optimized at every link to remain competitive: in-store communication, deposit and return systems, in-store collection, logistics, sorting, inspection, washing, redistribution of containers, and uncompromising sanitary quality. When each player operates its own “mini-loop,” costs soar. When infrastructure is shared, investments and operating costs are spread across very large volumes, standards are shared, and service quality becomes consistent.
This shared approach facilitates the integration of all stakeholders, optimizes infrastructure, reduces costs, reassures manufacturers and retailers about operational efficiency and quality, and provides greater clarity for consumers.
European comparisons help clarify the path forward. Germany boasts return rates many would envy — up to 98% in the most mature systems. It is a historical model suited to the structure of the German market, but fragmented: highly efficient yet sector-specific loops that are difficult to extend to other categories because they rely on specialized wholesale circuits that do not yet exist in France’s supermarket sector.
Paradoxically, France’s “delay” is an opportunity: to start from an almost blank page and design from the outset a multi-product system adapted to the French retail structure, designed for everyday consumption, and interoperable across brands, retailers, regions, and operators.
This is why we launched the ReUse initiative in 2023 with the entire French reuse ecosystem: to define the most efficient “ideal” shared system according to the stakeholders across the value chain. This system was launched on June 12 in four French regions to test it before national rollout starting in 2027.
Concretely, the ReUse system establishes a complete loop validated from both a marketing and commercial standpoint, as well as industrially and in terms of quality:
Standardization is not an engineer’s whim; it is one of the main levers for economic and environmental optimization. European feedback is clear: too many packaging formats increase loop costs by around 30%. Our approach: as few standards as possible — but enough to cover major uses.
For several years, we have co-developed standardized packaging ranges with producers and packaging manufacturers. These ranges were designed to meet market needs (capacity, format, materials) while addressing reuse constraints (washability, durability, identification) and minimizing adaptation of existing filling lines.
To make containers immediately identifiable, we chose an “R-heart” marking engraved in the glass: consumers can see they are holding reusable packaging that must be returned after use to trigger a new loop, even if the label is missing.
To kick-start the system and encourage standardization, we decided to finance the first pool of standardized packaging made available to manufacturers entering the system. This reduces both operational and economic risk: companies do not need to purchase massive inventory upfront — they can test, learn, and iterate.
Standardization does not prevent marketing differentiation, which can be achieved through labels and closures, nor does it exclude “iconic” packaging. High-volume, high-symbolic-value brands have a key role to play in increasing both volumes and visibility.
The sensitive issue, of course, is cost. Today, reuse loops are more expensive than single-use packaging. This is true for existing local loops, and even more so for a national-scale system during its rollout phase before reaching maturity. However, our modeling shows that over a 10-year horizon, with billions of packages in circulation, this shared and optimized system becomes, on average, competitive with single-use.
The key challenge is therefore reaching maturity as quickly as possible and securing dedicated funding to ensure competitiveness during scale-up.
On financing, the 5% reuse allocation required of producer responsibility organizations allows us to co-finance the pilot, including in-store collection equipment, harmonized point-of-sale materials, the first pool of standardized packaging, and support for shared washing centers.
But for national deployment starting in 2027, we will need all types of financing — public subsidies, private investors, banks, and more — to go further, faster.
On the consumer side, we must reestablish both the word and the gesture. We launched national campaigns (“Reuse, Again and Again”) to anchor the idea that reuse is already part of everyday life (deposit systems, at-home reuse, bulk purchasing). In stores, we implemented a unified visual language: the color purple — rare in retail — immediately signals products under deposit for reuse and the return equipment.
The objective is simple: create a reflex and familiar cues for consumers — I buy reusable → I return the empty packaging → I recover my deposit.
Our shared ambition is to make the shared reuse system the “new yellow bin”: a common infrastructure, open to all, clear for consumers, efficient for businesses, rigorous in quality and safety, and scalable to integrate new product categories.
Reuse is not a virtuous side note; it is a collective-interest infrastructure to be built. We have the foundations (law, targets, initial funding), the blueprints (standards, interoperability, rollout trajectories), and the teams (manufacturers, retailers, operators, territories). It is now up to all of us to accelerate construction, maintain quality, and embed the reflex across society. That is the price for moving reuse from experimentation to becoming an industrial pillar of the transition.
This article is a translated version. The original publication is available on Les Echos Solutions 👉
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